Against All Odds started life as a spare demo called How Can You Just Sit There from the Face Value sessions, it remained in Phil Collins’s archive until during the 1983 American leg of the Genesis tour to support MAMA/Shapes album Phil was contacted by Taylor Hackford and asked could he write a song for his up coming movie. Phil politely explained now was not the best time because he was in the middle of a Genesis tour and thus focused on that and if Taylor contacted him after the tour had finished he would gladly write the song.
Well someone persisted and during days off on the Genesis tour Phil Collins found time to flesh out the demo into a good quality song thanks to Arif Mardin who helped immensely also.
Meanwhile Mike Rutherford was approached and the fruit of that approach is Making A Big Mistake which because it contains Mike on the vocals it has a similar sound and feel to the album Mike released in 1982 called Acting Very Strange so it is assumed that Making A Big Mistake came from the writing sessions of that album and simply wasnt used, it is a rather decent song with a dark side to it as can be seen in the movie Against All Odds.
Against All Odds was released on the 7th April 1984 reaching number 2 in the UK charts and staying in the charts for 14 weeks.
Side A
Against All Odds
Side B
Making A Big Mistake
Released on Virgin Records (VS 674)
Against All Odds
Produced by Arif Mardin
Making A Big Mistake
Produced by Mike Rutherford
